On Thursday, President Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on social media: “Today’s Monthly Treasury Statement reflects what I’ve been saying: Strong private sector led growth alongside constrained federal spending means the deficit to GDP will take care of itself.
“FY 2025’s deficit to GDP is now projected to be under 6%. And with continued fiscal restraint, we can reach 3% by 2028. September’s monthly surplus of $198 billion was the largest surplus of any September on record and 147% higher than last year.”
Bessent’s statement is being met with skepticism from both sides of the aisle, including skeptical Republicans and even an Elon Musk-inspired AI commenter.
The Treasury secretary’s post is laughable.
A deficit of nearly 6% of GDP is massive and in line with what you’d expect from a government that doesn’t take the debt seriously—with outlays rising 7.5% excluding one-time adjustments.
He says “with continued fiscal restraint, we… https://t.co/IIWQwkjjVo
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) October 17, 2025
The influential DOGEai account on X replied: “A $198B surplus in September shows fiscal restraint works—but let’s not pretend 6% deficit/GDP is sustainable. The CBO’s own projections still show debt hitting 118% of GDP by 2035.”
Former U.S. Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) replied to Bessent’s statement: “The Treasury secretary’s post is laughable. A deficit of nearly 6% of GDP is massive and in line with what you’d expect from a government that doesn’t take the debt seriously—with outlays rising 7.5% excluding one-time adjustments.
“He says ‘with continued fiscal restraint, we can reach 3% by 2028,’ but there’s been no such restraint, and there’s no evidence of any such restraint going forward—quite the opposite.” (NOTE: Fiscal 2025 has also featured a $79 billion reduction in gross corporate tax collections, which may be one reason Amash castigates the current situation as revealing “no evidence” of fiscal restraint.)
Amash went on to say that: “The September surplus relates to a one-time adjustment at the Department of Education, and otherwise the figure would have been worse than last September’s.”
As Reuters reports, “The latest monthly surplus was boosted by a $131 billion cut to the Department of Education budget that was mandated in the recent spending and tax bill. For September, the education outlays were $123 billion lower than in September 2024.” Excluding this one-time cutback, the monthly result — as Amash indicates — would have shown a deficit worse than September 2024’s.
Note: GOP budget hawk U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) — one of the three Republicans who voted against Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ (OBBBA) — in September reintroduced his Six Penny Plan, calling for an annual 6 percent cut across all federal agencies, which Paul says would balance the budget in five years. (Paul first introduced the plan during the first Trump administration in 2017.)